


What's a Nice Man Like You Doing In A Place Like This?

by Teragram



Category: Psych
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-27
Updated: 2012-09-29
Packaged: 2017-10-30 05:00:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/328016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teragram/pseuds/Teragram
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lassiter’s tailing of Shawn Spencer reveals more than he expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> They don’t appear to have these places in Santa Barbara, although we have lots of them in Toronto. I’ve named this one after the year that California’s Assembly Bill 489 went into effect, striking down the state’s sodomy law.  
> Written and edited during bouts of insomnia I had in January of 2012. Inspired by Inkcapacitated’s Gradual Impingement, which presents a much darker side of Lassie.

Shawn’s furtive movements had every hair on the back of Lassiter’s neck standing at attention.  Finally, after a week of tailing him, something was happening. The way Shawn had turned down O’Hara’s invitation to lunch with her and Guster, the way he’d hurried away from the station, and the way he looked over his shoulder as he slipped into the alley were all setting off Lassiter’s alarm bells. 

 _Any way you cut it_ , he thought, _Spencer was up to something._ And if it had anything to do with how he was getting the inside information that enabled him to pull off this psychic detective crap, Lassiter wanted to know about it.

He’d trailed Shawn easily across town as he weaved in and out of traffic on his motorcycle, and now, as disappeared behind a nondescript door, there was a definite clandestine air about him.  Lassiter’s pulse was racing and he felt the thrill that preceded victory.  All the time he’d wasted watching Spencer rent movies and get take-out was finally going to pay off. 

He waited a few moments and then slipped down the alley himself, stopping at the door.  The windowless brick building had no markers, apart from a sign by the door that read 1976. Lassiter didn’t know if that was a name or a street address.  He paused only a moment in the light from the bare bulb overhead before he, too, stepped inside. 

The claustrophobic hall ended at a booth with a plexiglass window, like a low-rent cheque-cashing storefront. The only visible signage indicated that you had to be 21 years or older to enter, and that rooms cost $15 while lockers cost $5.  The clerk behind the window, a tall thin man in his thirties with tattoos down both arms, lowered the book he was reading, looked at Lassiter appraisingly and then asked “room or locker?”

Lassiter considered flashing his badge to avoid paying cover, but hesitated.  He didn’t want to risk tipping Shawn off.  He pulled a bill from his wallet and passed it through the small half moon cut in the bottom of the plexiglass.

“Locker.” _What is this place?_ He wondered. _Some kind of rooming house, maybe?_

The man passed over a key on an elastic band, which Lassiter looped around his wrist, and then a buzzer sounded and a door to his right opened, allowing him entry. On the other side, the clerk handed him a rough white towel, and turned back to his book.

The interior was dim, illuminated by black light, neon, and the occasional string of Christmas lights. He could smell cologne, sweat, chlorine, and something familiar that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. The music was loud, like a club. Yet behind it, all around him, he heard the sounds of men’s voices lowered in murmured conversation, and beyond that, the sounds of a scuffle somewhere.  He could make out some men drinking at a bar in the lobby, dead ahead.  After days of surveillance he knew Shawn’s outline and body movements intimately, and these men, though the right age, weren’t him.  He moved further into the building and tried to quash his growing sense of unease.

 _Spencer was definitely up to something here_ , he thought gleefully. And if he wanted to hide it from O’Hara and Guster then it was probably exactly what he’d been waiting for.  _Spencer has to have a source of information inside the department,_ he figured.  _Maybe someone in records.  And now he’s meeting them here._

He put a hand to the wall and felt his way along a corridor past a series of numbered doors, turned a corner, past some lockers, and down another corridor.  The building was overheated, and he started to sweat under his jacket. The place was a maze and he was already losing his sense of direction. Under the music he could hear the grunts of men working out.  A heavy man wearing nothing buy a towel passed, and Lassiter was struck by the inviting look the stranger gave him. _I must be in a gym_ , he thought. _But what kind of gym has a bar in it?_

Then, as he passed a partially open door everything suddenly became alarmingly clear.  He hadn’t seen much—just a glimpse, really—but it had been enough.  Men were having sex. Suddenly the lack of women in the lobby made sense.  He stepped back, almost stumbling, as the pounding in his head seemed to sync with the beat of the bass, disorienting him. He leaned against the wall, and tried to clear his mind. __

 _Maybe, he thought, still clinging to his original theory, Spencer is meeting his contact here. He probably thinks I’d never follow him into a place like this._ And if he were honest then he had to admit that he probably wouldn’t have, if he’d known.

He felt a hand on his arm, and it took all his willpower not to pull his gun.

The room was smaller than his college dorm, but made from a similar mold: a single bed attached to the wall with a thin mattress and a stark white fitted sheet that almost glowed in the darkness.  He could make out a small bedside table and a full size locker.  He sat on the mattress, glad for the support, and leaned against the wall.  He turned his head as his peripheral vision caught movement and saw his own face, pale and wide-eyed, staring back at him.  The wall behind him was entirely mirrored. His dorm room hadn’t had anything like that.

Shawn stood with his back to the door, blocking the exit, but Lassiter didn’t feel threatened or trapped.  If anything, he felt relieved to see a familiar face.  Shawn was wearing nothing but a pair of light grey boxer briefs.  He had his arms crossed loosely, and one bare foot rested casually against the door.  He was clearly waiting for an explanation.

“What the hell?” Shawn’s voice felt strangely reassuring. “You were following me?” Despite the intonation, Lassiter knew it was a statement more than a question.

“Maybe.” He certainly didn’t have any other excuse on hand to explain his presence in what he now realized was a gay bathhouse.

Lassiter leaned forward, rested his arms on his legs, and looked at a spot on the floor. He tried not to think about what must be going on around them, despite the sounds that carried through the thin walls and over the thumping bass. In dozens of tiny rooms, exactly like this one, men were touching one another in the most intimate ways possible, gratifying their lusts in the dark with strangers. The more he imagined it the more filthy it seemed, even if it did have an alluring and easy logic to it. 

“Why were you following me?”

Lassiter laced his fingers together and leaned his forehead into them, shielding his eyes from Shawn’s near naked body. At least now he knew why the place was so overheated.

“You were…behaving suspiciously.”  He cleared his throat. “The way you ditched O’Hara and Guster.”

“Did it occur to you that maybe I didn’t want them to know where I was going?”

Lassiter could believe that.  He could only imagine what O’Hara and Guster would think of a place like this.  O’Hara’s idea of two men together was shaped by television shows like Will & Grace. In her world gay men wore suits, had perfect hair and teeth, and walked around being sweet and witty. Men meeting furtively in dark room, exchanging anything but names, wouldn’t even occur to her. And Guster would be repulsed by the hygiene issues alone. Lassiter, on the other hand, understood the gnawing loneliness that drove someone to risk their reputation, and other things too, for the comfort of human contact, however fleeting.

“I’m sorry.” The words were hard to get out, but he meant them. Whatever need had driven Spencer here, he had no intention of judging him.  The whole thing hit too close to home.

Shawn sighed. “So what, you thought I was meeting my contact?  Exchanging money for police secrets and tips on psychic detection?”

“Something like that,” Lassiter admitted. He noticed a bowl on the bedside table, holding an assortment of condoms and tubes of lubricant like little ketchup packages. This was miles from what he’d expected to find Spencer doing.  He wondered how often he came to places like this, how far he went and with whom.

Shawn smiled, his features fully visible now that Lassiter’s eyes had adjusted to the gloom. “So you came here to expose me,” Shawn said. He moved a hand slowly across his chest and then deliberately down his stomach, stopping at the waistband of his briefs.  Lassiter realized he’d been staring and looked at the floor again.

“Your secret’s safe with me, Spencer.” He stood, and set his jaw, trying to look more self-assured than he felt. “Unless you’re breaking the law, I’m not interested.” He took a step forward, expecting Shawn to move aside, but he held his ground, fixing him with a stare from those bewitching green eyes.

“Sure about that?”

Lassiter tried to look anywhere but into Shawn’s eyes and found himself staring at the bulge curving against the front of his briefs, distending the grey jersey.

 _Oh God_ , he thought.  _He’s hard._

Lassiter ran a hand down his mouth and chin, and inhaled though his nose, trying to clear his mind of the fantasy it was unfolding, but instead got a head full of the musky odour of sweat and sex that permeated the small room. He placed his right palm on the door by Shawn’s head.  If Shawn had stepped aside, he would have opened the door and left, striding through the hallways for the nearest exit. But Shawn didn’t move. And apart from an apprehensive glance at Lassiter’s shoulder holster, he didn’t look away.

Instead he reached out and took Lassiter’s left hand in both of his, stroking the skin lightly, his fingers rough and warm.  Then, slowly, he pulled the hand forward until it was pressed heavily over the bulge in Shawn’s briefs. Lassiter could feel the heat radiating through the cloth and into his fingers, and the hard outline of the swollen muscle. He moved his thumb across the swell of the head and a thick wetness darkened the fabric and slicked his fingertips. Shawn stood there with his back to the door, his mouth slightly open, and his head tilted expectantly, daring him to take the risk. He squeezed it tentatively and the groan that escaped Shawn’s lips left him half hard. Yet while he might share the same needs, maybe even the same desires as Shawn, he had much more to risk.

As if reading his mind Shawn leaned forward and spoke, his voice low and smoky, “what happens in the bathhouse, stays in the bathhouse.”

It was the assurance that some part of him had been waiting for. He felt his self-control sinking under the tide of lust he’d been suppressing for the past two years. Almost before he’d decided to, he slipped his fingers past the tight elastic of Shawn’s briefs, wrapping his hand around his erection.  Shawn grabbed Lassiter’s belt, and ran his other hand up the back of his head, pulling him down, toward his eager mouth.

Shawn must have had a drink at the bar, because he tasted like rum and coke. Even more than his hand in Shawn’s underwear, this kiss felt illicit. Perhaps part of the wrongness he felt lay in the fact that it didn’t feel as strange as he thought it should.  Apart from the rough stubble of his jaw, kissing Shawn was like any other kiss—soft, wet, and arousing. Promising. Yet he had no idea what the sex it was promising might entail. A score of half-remembered homophobic jokes poured though his mind.  He tightened his grip in Shawn’s briefs, and jerked his hand more franticly.

 _At least I know how to do this_ , he thought.  Given how often he’d practiced on himself, he ought to.  Shawn gasped and clamped a hand over Lassiter’s own, stilling his movement. 

“If you keep that up you’ll miss the main event.”

“Main event.” Lassiter felt a shiver up his spine, half excitement half fear.

“It’s why I came here.” He loosened Lassiter’s tie, and pulled his dress shirt free of his trousers.

“Right.” Lassiter swallowed, let go of the hot flesh in his fist and reluctantly pulled his hand free.  He’d almost forgotten that he’d interrupted a plan already in progress. He removed his holster, badge, and wallet, setting them on a high shelf inside.  _What kind of man Shawn would have waited for if I hadn’t come along_ , he wondered as he removed his dress shirt. _Does Spencer have a type, or would any man do?_

Shawn carded his fingers through Lassiter’s chest hair.  “I love this whole Mark Ruffalo thing you’ve got going on here.” He leaned in and rubbed his cheeks across Lassiter’s pectorals, inhaling his scent.

“Thanks,” Lassiter said. In all the times Spencer had commented on the ‘sternum bush’ it had never once occurred to him that he’d wanted to bury his face in it.

Shawn motioned to the bed and Lassiter sat next to him, suddenly feeling like an awkward virgin. 

 _It’s not too late_ , he reminded himself.  _You can still back out if you want to._ He glanced at the door, uncertain whether he was making sure it was locked or considering bolting through it. 

“I’m not sure that I can,” he hesitated, afraid to hear his anxieties made more real than they already felt. He shifted his posture on the bed to face Shawn and began again. “That is, I don’t know what you were expecting.”

“Well I wasn’t expecting those!” Shawn looked down at Lassiter’s sock garters, visible where his trouser legs had hitched up, and unsuccessfully tried to suppress a grin. 

“What?” Lassiter said defensively.  “They keep my socks up.” Then, in response to a raised eyebrow from Shawn he added, “Nothing else needs help.  Trust me.”

“Oh, that much I can make out from here. Although maybe I should make a closer inspection.” Shawn kneeled on the floor in front of him.  Lassiter felt his pulse quicken as Shawn unbuckled his belt and undid his trousers, pulling the zipper wide and sliding his hand past the elastic of his boxers.

Lassiter’s breath deepened as Shawn enveloped him in the hot wetness of his mouth.  He felt a rush at the pressure and movement of his tongue, and at the sight of the psychic’s bobbing head. He ran his hand along Shawn’s jaw, feeling his stubble bristle under his fingers, then gripped a fistful of Shawn’s hair and tentatively pulled him forward.  Shawn obliged, and Lassiter buried himself in his throat. Shawn made three or four deep plunges and Lassiter groaned and let his head fall back, feeling at once grateful and smug. After all the teasing, all the joking and all the innuendo, he had finally found a way to shut him up. That it should take a cock in his mouth seemed somehow fitting. He relaxed his grip and Shawn rocked back on his heels, gasping.  Lassiter noted that Shawn was still hard, the wetness on the front of his brief now a dark circle.

“You’re lucky I was a semifinalist in the Santa Barbara annual hotdog eating contest,” Shawn said, “otherwise I might have taken that personally.” He pulled off his briefs, his nakedness echoed by his reflection.  He reached into the bowl on the bedside table and tossed Lassiter a condom.

Lassiter caught it in his left hand and the tension in his jaw unwound a little.  This answered one of his questions as to what his role was expected to be.  He felt relieved and immediately wondered if that said something bad about him.  But as attractive as he found Shawn, there were some lines he couldn’t see himself crossing. Shawn clearly didn't have those inhibitions.

If it hadn't been for Shawn's insistent hands, Lassiter wasn't sure he'd have had the nerve to completely remove his pants, but a few moments of fumbling and they were both naked on the thin mattress, which despite its location, did not feel as if it had been designed to accommodate two people.

 _Not side by side anyway_ , he thought. Lassiter sat up on his knees and frowned.

“Losing your nerve?” Shawn asked between kisses on the detective’s neck. “I promise, I’m not a giant preying mantis that devours teenage virgins, and there’s no serial killer hiding in the locker waiting to murder us for being slutty co-eds.”

Lassiter climbed over top of Shawn.  “The bed’s too small,” he complained.  “It’s like trying to make out in a Mazda Miata.”

“I was thinking the most awkward game of sardines ever,” Shawn said as he wrapped his legs around Lassiter’s waist. “Okay Lassie.  Rock me like a hurricane.”

As he kneeled between Shawn’s legs he told himself that the fear and vulnerability he read on Shawn’s face was just a trick of the light.  After all, given where they were, how innocent could he be? 

“Are you sure about this?” he whispered, realizing the question applied to himself as much as to Shawn.

“As sure as I am that every episode of Children’s Hospital will be offensively funny.”  When Lassiter’s forehead remained wrinkled, he added, “That’s a yes.”

Lassiter’s conscience tugged at him as he rolled on the condom and coated it with lube.  He'd never done this to anyone before. To his mind, this was something only hookers and…men in places like this did.  He told himself that he was only giving Spencer what he wanted, but tried not to think that it might be something he wanted too. Sure, he'd imagined doing this a few times before, as part of a scenario where he taught the fake psychic a lesson, and it usually involved Shawn making a tearful apology. It didn’t say anything about his masculinity, he hoped.

 _If it hadn't been me_ , he assured himself, _it would have been any of these other men_. Hell, for all he knew this was just a warm up, and Spencer would service half the guys in here before he left. Assuring himself that he wasn't taking anyone's innocence, he gripped the condom at the base and pushed forward. The entry was more difficult than he expected, and gripping Shawn's hip, he pushed harder, sliding suddenly past all resistance.  Shawn hissed and his back arched. Lassiter's guilt fought with his defensiveness, until the guilt won.

“You okay?” he asked, his hips stilled.

Lassiter wondered if this were some kind of an act for his benefit. If so, Spencer had seriously misjudged his gullibility.  Spencer had probably done this dozens, maybe hundreds of times, he supposed. The word cockslut came to mind.

Shawn spit into his hand and tugged at his flaccid cock until it was once again rigid in his fist. 

“Okay,” he panted, his breath coming faster now, “We're good.”

Lassiter pumped into him, slowly at first, amazed at the grip of the muscles surrounding him, and then harder as pleasure overrode his anxiety.  He watched Shawn jerk himself off, open-mouthed and gasping before him.  Despite being aroused by the sight, he felt a slight revulsion at the idea that any man should like being used in this way.

 _Surely no normal man could take it in the ass like this and look that turned on,_ he thought.

The pace of their sex increased and Lassiter felt sweat slicking his back and trickling down his arms. He gripped Shawn’s shoulders and buried his head in the crook of his neck.

“Oh God, Lassie,” Shawn cried out, whether in pain or pleasure Lassiter wasn't sure until he saw the cum squirting across his chest. For a moment he was disgusted.  A torrent of insults poured through his mind, and the hard and rough fucking he was giving Shawn suddenly seemed no better than he deserved. The thought was too much. Lassiter came, gritting his teeth and turning his head away from the mirror. 

For several breathless moments he lay helpless, Shawn, beneath him, panting. When his muscles revived he gripped the base of the condom and pulled out, noticing Shawn wince as he did so.  He peeled it off his rapidly softening cock and dropping it into the garbage can. He hated the idea of leaving his DNA behind, as if the room were a crime scene, but the alternative—taking it with him—was even more repulsive.  Sweaty and exhausted he wiped himself down with the rough towel he'd been given and then leaned back against the cold surface of the mirrored wall.  At least this way he didn't have to see the guilt on his face.

Lassiter grabbed his shorts and pants from the floor and began to pull them on. He wasn’t sure what the etiquette of this place was, but somehow he didn’t think it involved cuddling or invitations to dinner.  He was eager to go home and take a shower. Maybe rinse himself with Dettol.  Yet despite his itch to put as much space between himself and Shawn as humanly possible, there were some questions he wanted answered before they went back to their lives and never spoke of this again.

“I have your assurance—”

“—that I won’t spill this faster than an Exxon ship passing a bird sanctuary?” Shawn cut in. “You certainly do.”

“You do this often?” he asked, hoping that Shawn did.  Maybe that way it wouldn’t seem like such a big deal.

Shawn smiled. “First time, actually. It's not as easy as it looks in pornos.  It’s like trying to fit the entire Law and Order Collection into a case designed to hold Arrested Development.”

“Right.” Lassiter smiled mirthlessly and nodded his head in surrender.  If Spencer wasn’t going to tell him the truth what was the point in even trying?

“But then you’d know that if you’d been following me longer,” Shawn said, looking down at the white sheet and toying with a wrinkle.

Lassiter, his hand on the doorknob, paused, turned, and raised an eyebrow. “You knew I was following you?”

“Duh!  You were easier to spot than Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Bruce Lee at a square dancing competition in Wisconsin. You: binoculars and a latte outside the Blockbuster on North Milpas, 2:45 pm. 3:20 pm, you again, binoculars and Burger King takeout, across the street from the Taco Bell where I was eating lunch. I know your whole following-me routine.” Shawn smiled.  “It’s flattering, really. It got my hopes up. Why do you think I led you here?”

“Led me?”  Lassiter’s mind refused to believe what he was hearing.  If it were true, then Spencer hadn’t…wouldn’t have…. But he refused to let his mind go there. Spencer was lying, as usual.  He had to be. 

“I mean really, how else could I have gotten you into a place like this? It was too good a chance to pass up.”

Lassiter felt his face flush with anger and embarrassment.  “Screw you, Spencer.”

“Not for a couple of days at least” Shawn said, wiping himself with a towel and grimacing as he did so. 

Lassiter opened the door and strode angrily into the hall. He could feel his lunch rising sourly into his throat, and knew he had to get out of the building and somewhere he could clear his mind and think. Or avoid thinking.


	2. Chapter 2

Lassiter was drunk. He'd started drinking at Tom Blair's pub after work. In retrospect, it had been a few too many. Why else, he reasoned, would he have thought it was a great idea to return to the building whose only signage read 1976. He'd come to think of it as a crime scene, although whether he saw himself as the criminal or the victim, he wasn't sure.

The place was darker than he remembered, but he didn't mind. The anonymity and the darkness were like a bullet-proof vest, securing him in safety. As he finished his drink he felt eyes watching him.

D _id you really think Spencer would be here?_ He asked himself the question with a mocking sense of distain for his own weakness. Whatever had drawn him back here, it didn't have much to do with whatever these other men were offering. Or did it?

 _Maybe_ , he reasoned, _this isn't a sexual obsession with Spencer. Maybe It's just some kind of accumulated homosexual tension._ Perhaps, like too much booze, he'd feel better if he could just get it all out of his system.

From across the room, a man approached and ordered a drink from the bartender. Wearing only a white towel around his waist, he looked like a marine on his way to the shower. They locked eyes for a few moments, and then a hand was on Lassiter's leg, moving up this thigh. Before he knew it he was making out with a stranger, and thinking of Spencer, as if the intensity of his fantasy could make it real. They'd gone to Lassiter's room where they'd exchanged handjobs but not names. From there his night just got worse.

“Wake up.”

Lassiter raised his head, became aware of the pounding pain this caused, and lowered it to the mattress again. The rough cotton of the sheet against his cheek felt softer than it had any right to be. From somewhere far off, someone was talking.

“Dude. Wake up.”

Lassiter turned his head away from the sound, hoping it would stop and he could slip back into unconsciousness.

“Lassie.”

Only one person called him that. He pried open an eye and peered out, seeing Shawn sitting on the end of the mattress, looking concerned. He wondered if he were dreaming it.

“Spencer?” He pushed himself to a sitting position, and as a wave of nausea overcame him, grabbed the garbage can and retched into it. Once he'd emptied his stomach a few times he turned back to Shawn. “What are you doing here?”

“You drunk-dialed me, like, three times.” Shawn cracked open a bottle of water and handed it over.

Lassiter guzzled the liquid and frowned. In the mirrored wall his reflection glared back at him over dark circles. As much as he'd hoped to find Spencer here, this was not how he had planned it would go.

“I called you?” He tried to run back through his memory but the last thing he could recall was having some guy's head in his lap. He was pretty sure it hadn't been the marine, so it must have been one of the guys who had paused in the doorway, silently asking or offering. He suspected he had passed out in the middle of something.

“Give me my pants.” When Shawn complied Lassiter checked his pockets, and was both relieved and surprised to find that his wallet and phone were still there. He looked through his call history. Shawn was right; he had called him at 2:30 am, 2:38 am and 2:46 am. It was now ten after three.

 _Oh God_ , the thought shot through him like a wave of nausea, _How much did I tell him?_ His head spun. Surely he wouldn't have admitted that he hadn't stopped thinking of Shawn since that night, that every time he'd come since then he'd done so with Shawn's name on his lips. Of course he didn't remember dialing, so God only knows what he might have admitted.

“Next time you call me in the middle of the night, the least you can do is talk,” Shawn said. “I welcome drunken confessions.”

Lassiter barely dared to believe that Shawn might be telling the truth.

“If I didn't talk, how did you know where I was?” He asked as he struggled into his clothes.

“I zeroed in on your aura with my karmic GPS,” Shawn said, passing him his wrinkled dress shirt. The truth was,by the third call he had recognized the song rotation playing over the sound system from the last time he was there. Not many places had an appreciation for the work of Scritti Politti.

“I should have known better than to ask.” Lassiter stood and adjusted his clothes, checking his pockets for his keys, but to no avail. His body wanted nothing more than to return to the tantalizing comfort of the mattress, perhaps dragging Shawn down with him, but he knew he wouldn't feel himself until he was away from the place and its flashes of shameful memory, however fractured they might be. But as much as he wanted to stay, and as much as he needed to leave, he needed answers more.

“Just tell me _why_ , Spencer,” he said, looking into the locker for any belongings he might have stashed there.

“Why what?”

“Why you did this to me.” He pulled his tie from a hook inside and slammed the door of the locker closed.

“ _I_ did this?” Shawn said incredulously. “What am I, Buffy the straight man slayer? I wasn't even here.”

Lassiter mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like “Exactly.”

“I didn't make you come here,” Shawn protested. “Queer isn't contagious.”

Lassiter had to disagree. Before Shawn came along things had been under control. The occasional crush, the odd fantasy—it had all been easy enough to get a grip on, so to speak. But then Shawn had invaded his space and his mind, teasing him, awakening feelings he preferred to keep buried, and leaving him with this insistent need.

He looked at Shawn accusingly and jabbed him in the chest with a forefinger.

“You take advantage of people.” Shawn raised an eyebrow in response. “You seduce people,” Lassiter added.

“People? How are you suddenly plural?” He looked under the bed and in the locker. “Are there other Lassiters hiding in here, because that would be totally hot.”

“This isn't a joke.” He gestured contemptuously at the tiny room and then finally at his own disheveled self. “ _All_ of this is your fault, Spencer.”

Shawn's laughed in disbelief. “Oh, I get it. This is that gypsy curse where you lose your soul and turn all evil if you get laid. I've seen this before.” He crossed his arms and smirked, but Lassiter thought he saw something other than amusement flickering behind Shawn's eyes. “If anything,” he said, “ _I_ should be mad at _you_. One date and you're already cheating on me? I mean, I don't want to come across all jealous, but what, are you just sleeping with everyone that comes along? You could get mono or something.”

“I don't think anything I did here will give me mono,” Lassiter said through gritted teeth. If he were honest about it, he wasn't sure of what he did and didn't do last night.

“You know,” Shawn said, scooping Lassiter's keys from the floor and holding them out to him, “if you wanted to get laid all you had to do was call.”

Lassiter took his keys. “I'm going home,” he said. “Sorry I bothered you.”

“S'no bother.” Shawn followed him out of the room, down the hall and out into the chill of the starless night.

Lassiter pulled out his phone to call a cab and Shawn slapped a hand on his back.

“Come on. I'm parked down the street. Let me drive you.”

“Haven't you done enough?” Lassiter asked, still angry. As far as he was concerned Shawn still had a lot to answer for, such as having reduced him to feeling like a desperate, sex-obsessed teenager again.

“Apparently not. Come on.” Shawn pushed him east along the sidewalk. “If I've turned you into a monster the least I can do is make sure you get home safely. This neighbourhood is crawling with Van Helsings and villagers with torches.”

Lassiter carefully jack-knifed himself into the blue Echo and buckled his seatbelt.

“This is Guster's car,” he said. _Great! Does Guster know?_

“I couldn't very well rescue you from a den of iniquity on my motorcycle now, could I?” Shawn asked, not really expecting an answer. “Although that would have been very Top Gun.” He pulled onto the street and directed the vehicle toward the detective's apartment.

Lassiter smirked, wondering if he was meant to be Kelly McGillis in that fantasy.

“I didn't tell Gus why I needed it, if that's what you're worried about,” Shawn added.

“You were joking when you said I was cheating on you.” His tone made it a statement but the curiosity and fear in his eyes made it a question.

“Only kinda.” Shawn took a right and cruised smoothly past the closed storefronts.

“Did you really think that what we did back there meant—”

“—anything at all?” Shawn supplied. “I guess not.”

Even with what felt like his high school marching band parading painfully through his head, Lassiter could hear the disappointment in Shawn's voice. But as much as he'd have liked to think that his encounter with Shawn didn't mean anything, his current condition seemed like evidence to the contrary.

The Echo pulled in front of Lassiter's apartment and parked. Lassiter squinted at Shawn in the darkened interior.

“How did you know where I live?”

“Let's not do that whole song and dance where I say 'I'm psychic' and you say 'no, you're not,'” Shawn said. He got out of the car, circled around and opened the door on Lassiter's side. Lassiter struggled out of his seatbelt and unfolded himself from the little car.

“You don't have to open the door for me, Spencer,” he muttered. “I'm not your date.”

“A point which you have made _abundantly_ clear on more than one occasion.”

Lassiter didn't ask why Shawn was walking him to the door, and he didn't block him from following him into his apartment. The truth was, he wasn't exactly crazy about the idea of being alone with his own thoughts. Once inside Lassiter sat on the broad padded arm of an easy chair, pushed off his shoes and pulled off his tie. Shawn disappeared into the bathroom and came back with a glass of water and some Asprin. Lassiter accepted them with a nod of thanks.

As Lassiter painstakingly began to unbutton his dress shirt, Shawn stood with his hands in his pockets looking at the floor.

“Did you seriously expect an answer to your question?” he asked, bouncing lightly in place.

“Which question was that?” Much of what he'd said to Shawn had dissipated into the blur of his hangover. The only thing that stood out for him was Shawn's accusation of cheating. He'd never cheated on anyone. At least, not if he was aware they'd been dating. The thought that Shawn might actually mean it gave a whole different cast to the incident.

“The 'why did I do this to you' question.”

“Why,” Lassiter asked morosely. “Do you actually have a reason?” He picked up the glass of water from a side table and drained what remained.

“Would it make a difference?”

“Only to me.” Possible reasons that had occurred to Lassiter included a desire to undermine his self-confidence, humiliate him in front of his coworkers and destroy his career. Of course if the incident had been some kind of honey trap, he hadn't exactly put up much of a fight. And if that was Spencer's plan, why was he waiting so long to pull the trigger?

Shawn took a deep breath. “I like you, okay. Sure, you're uptight and overly critical,” he started to pace back and forth across the hardwood, “and this hate-on you have for squirrels is a little worrysome—although I'm sure it has deep-seated roots in your childhood—but I like you. You're like...an older, hotter, Tom Dwan. You've got the good looks of Submariner and the gritty sensitivity of Andy Sipowicz and you're packing heat in all the right places.”

Lassiter felt a flush of heat up the sides of his face. Shawn was looking up at him with that cocky body language that he always found so distracting, yet there was a fear in his eyes that the attitude didn't quite mask. He wondered what it was about the situation that Spencer found so unnerving. From where he stood, Spencer was holding all the cards.

 _If anyone should feel vulnerable here_ , Lassiter thought, _it should be me._

“So when I saw you were following me, “ Shawn continued, “I thought this might be the only chance I'd ever get, and maybe it was wrong, but I took it. I just...saw a chance to be with you and I grabbed it with both hands. Especially since I figured my preferred fantasy where you make out with me while I'm forming a bowl on a potters wheel was probably never going to happen.”

Lassiter wondered if it might actually be possible that Shawn had wanted him for more than just a quick release. It certainly might explain why being with him had felt so intense. He gripped the chair in an effort to fight the urge to grab Spencer and crush him against his chest.

“I _knew_ you didn't feel the same way,” Shawn said, looking at the ceiling—anywhere but into Lassiter's accusing eyes. “I knew that the best I could hope for was some quick and dirty hate-sex, but damn it, I took it.”

 _Hate sex?_ The term gutted him. _Was that what I did with Spencer?_ Certainly he'd hated himself—for not being strong enough to resist, for what he'd done to Spencer, and for how he'd tried to convince himself that sex was all he'd wanted. But as much as it had filled a need, it hadn't put a dent in his obsession. If anything, it had only inflamed it, providing feelings, images and memories with which to taunt him. The fact was, he still wanted Spencer and their hate-sex, if that was what they'd had, hadn't been nearly enough.

“So go ahead and pick whatever explanation makes you feel better,” Shawn ranted, raising his palms defensively. “Blame it on the booze or the bathhouse or aliens using mind control and forcing us to have big gay sex for their amusement. Whatever. Because I know that you would rather sponge bath Michael Moore, be a roadie for than Lil' Wayne, or drive a hybrid than admit that maybe you kind of like me too.”

 _Of course I kind of like Spencer,_ he thought. _Maybe more than kind of._ He didn't exactly sleep with everyone who came along, the previous evening notwithstanding. Although given the circumstances, maybe Shawn didn't realize that.  He clung to the one part of Shawn's monologue that didn't make him feel like a total heel.

“I _do_ drive a hybrid. I have a Ford Fusion.”

“Really? Huh. “ Shawn shrugged. “I would have thought you'd find that kinda girly.”

He smiled, just a little. “There's nothing effeminate about economical gas mileage.” As far as he was concerned, it was men who bought gas guzzling Hummers that were overcompensating.

“Right. Right.” Shawn's face had become a mask of indifference. Lassiter noted the purple shadows under his eyes and realized that like him, Shawn was exhausted. He'd interrupted his sleep and torn open an emotional wound that clearly had only begun to heal. But nothing he could think of to say promised to fix the situation before him.

Lassiter looked down the hall toward the bedroom and then back at Shawn. “Well, it's late, and I'm going to bed.” He turned and walked toward the bedroom, then paused halfway down the hall and turned to look back. “Are you coming?”

Shawn didn't hesitate.

 


	3. Chapter 3

By the time Lassiter peeled an eye open the numbers of his digital clock read 12:24 and the bright noonday sun filled the room, making everything he remembered from the night before feel unreal. He pushed himself upright, leaned on an arm, and looked down at Shawn Spencer, who lay sprawled across the bed like a starfish. Asleep, with all that cocky bravado gone from his face, Shawn looked guileless. Which, of course, was an illusion, given what he’d made Lassiter do to him.

 _Let_ , he corrected himself.  _What Spencer let me do to him_.

Lassiter ran his fingers through Shawn’s hair, whose ravaged style had always made him think of sex.  Knowing Shawn, that was probably his intention. While Lassiter couldn’t exactly claim to have been “pumping pussy since Christ was a corporal,” like Sgt. Tom Gunny Highway in Heartbreak Ridge, he’d had his fair share of sex. And he’d enjoyed it.  But nothing had matched what he’d done with Shawn in terms of intensity.

 _It had been good_ , he thought, tracing Shawn’s bottom lip with a finger. _Maybe too good. Anything this desirable was dangerous, because it gave him something to lose._

The realization came into his head all at once, as if it had travelled across time and space, destined to smash through all his excuses.  He wasn't just obsessed, or horny or having a midlife crisis.  He was having feelings.  Spencer had been right. He liked him.

_Shit!_

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu had written, ‘The onrush of a conquering force is like the bursting of pent-up waters into a chasm a thousand fathoms deep.’ What was true of Chinese armies seemed to be true for emotions as well, at least in Lassiter’s experience. Whatever he was feeling now must have been building for some time to come rushing at him with such force.  But however powerful they felt, such feeling were a dead end street.  This wasn't the start of something.  Sure, maybe he liked Shawn and maybe Shawn liked him. But they couldn't exactly date.

_Except, maybe we can._

The thought came from the same still cold voice inside him that had hatched every clever scheme he'd had since he’d first plotted to convince his mother to buy him an air rifle for his eighth birthday. That voice spoke to him now.

 _Nobody would have to know_. _Not if we're careful._   And in his fifteen years in a job where the slightest slip-up could get him killed, he had become very good at being careful.

Lassiter sat, watching Shawn sleep, and plotting his strategy. If he was going to be careful, he needed to have a plan.  And it needed to be airtight. He thought over his options until nearly 1:00 pm, when the rumbling of his stomach led him to slip carefully out of bed, throw on his housecoat, and continue planning his campaign in the kitchen.

He set the coffee percolating, pulled bacon and eggs from the fridge and began to prepare breakfast. And schemes. The aim of his campaign was clear: full sexual and emotional surrender on Spencer’s part. Most of all, he needed him on board when it came to secrecy, and the best way to do that was to make him think it was in his own interest.

But first things first.  He needed to convince Shawn that dating was not only possible, but necessary.

He turned at the sound of Shawn's bare feet slapping on the linoleum.

“Hey.” Shawn looked bedraggled, wary, and except for the lack of shoes, he was dressed to bolt. This was not a good start.

“Hey yourself.” Lassiter turned back to his food, pushing the eggs and bacon onto a plate with his spatula.  He hoped that his tone held just the right amount of familiarity and aloofness.  He’d learned the hard way that nothing sent a potential romantic interest running for the hills faster than desperation.  Or interest.

“Hungry?” He held out the plate he’d just finished preparing and was relieved when Shawn accepted it.  He added more bacon and eggs to the pan as Shawn slipped onto a barstool at the counter and began to pick at the eggs with a fork.

He could feel Shawn's eyes raking him like lasers, shooting out from beneath his lazily drooping lids.  Lassiter squirmed under the intensity. Shawn's gaze felt as if it would peel off his every defensive layer, exposing his soul to its bare bones. He mustn't allow it. Shawn wasn't psychic.  He couldn't read his mind. He could only see what he showed.  If his plan was going to work, he had to show strength.

“Force him to reveal himself,’ Sun Tzu had written of the enemy, ‘so as to find out his vulnerable spots.’ And despite his bravado, Lassiter reasoned that Shawn had to have some vulnerable spots. He just needed to find them.

He poured a cup of coffee, and held it out to Shawn, who took it warily, but nodded his thanks.

“So,” he asked as he pushed his own breakfast around in the skillet, “how long have you been…gay.”  He selected the term over the dozen other, less complimentary terms rattling around inside his head.

“Technically, I'm not _gay_ ,” Shawn said.  “At least, not full-time. I’m like Thirteen on House, but with far better hair.”

Lassiter kept his satisfaction to himself. If Shawn wasn’t turning their tryst into some kind of identity then maybe he wouldn’t feel the need to tell people about it, march in parades, or dress…well, dress any more flamboyantly than he already did. He shifted his own food to a plate and stood opposite Shawn at the counter to eat.

“How about you?” Shawn asked. Lassiter looked up from his food to see Shawn’s eyes boring into his.

“No.” He said.  “I’m not.” The less he explained the better. Winding up on the receiving end of an interrogation wasn’t part of the plan. He held Shawn’s gaze without giving away a hint of his anxiety or need.  He hadn’t become Head Detective by getting stared down.

Shawn smiled. “You sure about that?  Because I recall some distinctly—”

“Fine. I mean I’m not gay-gay,” Lassiter smirked. “Not rainbows and musicals gay.” The words felt like a lie in his mouth.  He might not care for rainbows or musicals, but the way he was feeling toward Shawn that morning felt pretty gay. Even now, the desire to drag him back into the bedroom had to be fought down like a meth addict, resisting arrest.

Still, he reasoned, this was part of the dance; each of them protesting their innocence, even as they colluded together.

“I'm not gay-gay either,” Shawn said, his playful wink undercutting his words.  He smirked. “Not Waylon Smithers or Adam Lambert gay. Not Hollywood Montrose gay.” Shawn ate a forkful of eggs and stared thoughtfully across the counter at him. “There was a week in 2002 when I was mistaken for a lesbian a few times.  Although in my defence, I was _not_ using my regular hairstylist.”

‘Take advantage of the enemy’s unreadiness,’ Sun Tzu advised, ‘make your way by unexpected routes, and attack unguarded spots.’

Lassiter could guess one of Shawn’s unguarded spots.

“Does Henry know?” Lassiter asked. “About your…proclivities”

“God no!” Shawn coughed on his eggs.  “I’d rather be bow-hunted by Ted Nugent.” He finished off his last piece of bacon and sucked a greasy fingertip.

“When are you planning on telling him?” Lassiter asked.  If Spencer had any dramatic coming out events in the works, he needed to know. It was like knowing if a suspect had a gun in the house before rushing in to make an arrest.

“Uh, that would be two weeks from _never_!” Shawn made a circle with his right thumb and index finger.  “Here is the loop,” he explained. He then held up his left index finger, as far out as he could extend it. “And here’s Henry, _far, far_ from the loop.” He dropped his hands.  “It was a sound policy when I was fourteen and it’s a sound policy now.” He smiled, looped his fingers again and brought his index up through them.  “And here is you, securely in the loop.” He wiggled his finger as if it were a tiny Lassiter finger puppet. It looked equal parts childish and obscene.

Lassiter finished his eggs and started on the bacon.  He always saved the bacon, his favourite, for last.  He’d learned patience as a child and it had served him well. Particularly when laying a trap.

“Is Guster in the loop?” he asked.

“Usually.” Shawn took a gulp of coffee.  “Hell, usually Gus _is_ the loop.”

“But not on this?”

“Not on this.” Shawn shrugged and slid off the stool.  “He might suspect. He probably does, especially after that incident where he walked in on me and another dude playing Dracula in a storage room in junior high. But that hasn’t happened since and I’d rather not open that bag of cats.” Shawn carried his plate to the sink, tore a piece of paper towel off the roll and wiped his hands and mouth.  “That was great,” he said.  “Thanks.”

_He’s making moves to leave. It’s now or never._

Lassiter turned a serious look on the dark coffee swirling in the SBPD mug in his hand. As Sun Tzu wrote, ‘Energy may be likened to the bending of a crossbow, decision to the releasing of a trigger.’ And Lassiter was very good at releasing a trigger.

“We should go out.”

Shawn turned slowly, mug in hand.

“Go…out?” He said the words as if he was hearing the phrase for the first time. His gaze never left Lassiter's face, searching for some sign of deception. “By 'go out' do you mean something other than what everyone else means?”

“On a date.”

Suspicion washed over Shawn’s face again, this time accompanied by some chewing of his bottom lip. “Define _date_.”

“You. Me. Dinner and a movie.” He forced his eyes to meet Shawn's gaze and hold it. This was the critical point in his campaign. If Shawn could be induced to agree on this point, then all the others—the secrecy, the disinformation, the subterfuge—would follow along like marching infantry.  Spencer might even suggest them himself.

“Yeah?” Shawn looked away, blushed, and smiled. “Yeah.  Okay.  Let’s do it.”

Victory.  Lassiter felt a glow of triumph spread outward from his gut and fill his body with its brilliance.  He bit his tongue to keep from smiling.

Lassiter nodded. “I’ll call you.”

Sun Tzu wrote ‘All warfare is based on deception.’ Lassiter would have liked nothing better than to drag Shawn back into the bedroom and spend the rest of the day plotting the boundaries of his sexual limits. Instead he put up the mask of indifference and aggression he’d used to hide his feelings since he was twelve.

“You should go now,” he said.  “I’ve got things to do.” He didn’t.

“Yeah, me too.”

Lassiter was pleased to catch the hint of regret in Shawn’s voice.

“I have to pick up Gus,” Shawn said as he walked down the hall toward the bedroom.  “He’s talked me into going to this Bouillabaisse Festival in Los Olivos. Who knew we had an annual Bouillabaisse festival?” He emerged again, now wearing his sneakers.

Lassiter followed him to the door.  Shawn reached for the knob, then paused, turned, and leaned against it.  Looking up at Lassiter with that same lascivious insolence he’d had at the bathhouse.

“Kiss me goodbye?”

Lassiter was on him in a second, recriminating himself for his eagerness even as his tongue invaded Shawn’s mouth.  Pinning him against the door, he enjoyed the surge of pleasure and power that washed through him. So good. So dangerous. Regretfully he pulled away and buried his face into Shawn’s hair, gasping in his scent to remember him by.

“Listen,” Shawn whispered into Lassiter’s neck, “If we’re going to do this, we're going to have to keep it hush-hush. I’m talking Monica and Chandler on Friends, but without everyone finding out.”

His face hidden from Shawn’s piercing gaze, Lassiter smiled. Perfect.

“Actually,” Shawn added, “with you it’s more like Buffy and Spike. But you get the idea.”

“If that’s what you want.” Lassiter loved it when a plan came together.

They muttered a few goodbyes and then he closed the door behind Shawn, leaned against it, and let out a breath he felt like he’d been holding for hours. Their battle of wills was far from over. He allowed himself no illusions about that.  If anything, this had just been the first volley.


End file.
